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Michelangelo, Renaissance Man of the Brain, Too?

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Michelangelo has long been known for his exacting mastery of human anatomy, although he often exaggerated or emphasized parts of the body in his paintings and sculptures to suit his esthetic aims.

Now a physician argues that Michelangelo was also intimately familiar with the human brain and that he used his knowledge of neuroanatomy to portray the brain symbolically in his ''Creation of Adam'' on the Sistine Chapel in Rome. In that famous fresco, Adam and God face each other, arms outstretched, index fingers almost touching, while a crowd of angels and an apprehensive Eve peer from God's side.

The physician, Dr. Frank Lynn Meshberger, a gynecologist at St. John's Medical Center in Anderson, Ind., proposes that the rose-colored form surrounding God, which resembles a flowing gown or the clouds of glory often found in Renaissance paintings, is a portrait of the human brain.

'The Spark of Life'

Dr. Meshberger insists that the artist was allegorically portraying the moment when God bestowed Adam with intelligence.

''People have said that what is being passed from God to man in the painting is the spark of life,'' Dr. Meshberger said in a telephone interview. ''But Adam is already alive. I think what God is giving to Adam here is intellect.''

Dr. Meshberger's theory appears in today's issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Other physicians and scholars familiar with the report say while the notion is intriguing, they are skeptical.

'More Than a Flying Brain'

''I certainly see how he had the idea, but I think it is a retrofit of his own modern knowledge onto Renaissance culture,'' said Dr. Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt, a professor of fine arts at New York University and a consultant for Renaissance art at the Vatican Museum.

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''All the elements in the image have profound traditional roots in the visual culture of the Renaissance and Middle Ages. God is more than a flying brain.'' But other art historians do not entirely dismiss the theory. ''There are drawings by Leonardo that showed details of the brain, and it seems scientists at the time were trying to establish the sections of the brain and their function in intelligence,'' said Dr. Graham Smith, an authority on 16th-century art at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. ''The idea of God being equated with the mind is quite attractive.''

In the report, Dr. Meshberger proposes that details of the fresco represent different parts of the brain. He says the billowing green scarf descending below the cluster of figures around God is the vertebral artery, the main artery that feeds blood to the brain.

He suggests that the pituitary stalk and gland, which produce many of the body's hormones, are shown in the leg and foot of the angel whose left leg dangles below the grouping.

A Question of Feet

''If you look at the feet of both God and Adam, they have five toes, as most feet do,'' said Dr. Meshberger. ''But this angel's foot is bifid,'' or two-cleft, just as the pituitary gland has two lobes, he said. Michelangelo probably learned the fine details of neuroanatomy just as he did the parts of the rest of the body, Dr. Meshberger says: by dissecting corpses. He points out that in the 16th century, Giorgio Vasari wrote in ''Lives of the Artists'' that ''Michelangelo very often used to flay dead bodies in order to discover the secrets of anatomy.''

But other physicians are not convinced that Michelangelo engaged in such arcane medical symbolism.

''It often happens that if you look long enough at a picture, you'll see all kinds of things,'' said Dr. James G. Ravin, an ophthalmologist in Toledo, Ohio, who has published widely on the effects of disease on artists. ''I was just in China, where they'll take you around mountain formations and point out various heads.

''You can say, oh, gosh, there's a thing that looks like a man, there's one like a woman, and they're kissing. But I think it's all an overinterpretation.''

A version of this article appears in print on October 10, 1990, on Page C00015 of the National edition with the headline: Michelangelo, Renaissance Man of the Brain, Too?. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe